Growing up in the afterglow of India's independence one had the impression that the country's freedom movement had been a crucible of the fight between good and evil and the former had forever vanquished the latter. As a young child one didn't know that the storied cauldron of the struggle for freedom had also produced and weathered the colossal self butchering of Indians by Indians during partition. With much less than honourable, and in many cases murderous, actions and omissions in that fateful hour, many had failed the spirit of the movement and its aspirations.
Throughout the independence movement and afterwards the giants such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, and Shastri exhorted Indians to raise their ethical game to usher in an ethical India. Nonetheless the slow death of ethics in Indian politics has been evident for some time. It started well before the Emergency rule of Indira Gandhi. The Emergency was only a symptom of its creeping demise. The last several decades have seen unbridled bribery and corruption of the public and political administration of the states and the country.
Concomitant with the decline in ethical public conduct have been numerous communal pogroms and riots in the country's post independence years. Lately things have gotten worse. There has been human butchery in the name of cow protection, the campaigns of Love Jihad and Ghar Vapasi, the killings of Muslims for allegedly carrying beef, storing it, or trading cows for slaughter, and silencing of dissenting voices.The public aiding and abetting of this criminal behaviour by the official and unofficial elements of the BJP, RSS, and their sundry fronts has been revolting and frighteningly dangerous to the political and cultural fabric of the country. As per the latest Democracy Index in the world, the Modi years haven't fared well for India's democracy; India has slipped down several notches on the index. The health of India's democracy has deteriorated.
In the last four years India has had to endure the painful diatribes of the likes of Amit Shah, Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj Singh, and Uma Bharti. Through it all the most disturbing has been the virtual unbroken silence of the Prime Minister--the silence that has signalled the rampant and constant asphyxiation of political ethics in India. In the midst of this most depressing and communally divisive period in independent India people have continued, often against great odds, the struggle for a better tomorrow. In their worst nightmares few believed it could get worse.
And then it did.
No, I am not referring to the politically clownish and dangerous Union minister Giriraj Singh and his well known communalist and divisive antics--the latest being his meeting in Nawada District Jail with Bajrang Dal and VHP activists arrested for fanning communal hatred wherein he praised them for working for communal harmony, the exact opposite of what they were actually arrested and jailed for. India has come to expect perilous skulduggery from his ilk.
I am talking about Jayant Sinha, the supposed liberal face of the BJP, who publicly honoured the eight convicted assassins of an innocent meat trader Alimuddin Ansari. The murder took place a year ago in Jharkhand. Recently after their release on bail the convicts were honoured and garlanded by the silver spoon born and bred Sinha. When he stooped to the dog whistle politics of garlanding the butchers of Ansari they were convicted murders. Their release hadn't and couldn't render their convictions null and void. And the matter was still before the courts.
Faced with legitimate criticism and ridicule for his deliberate pandering to the merchants of hate he changed tack and argued he was "honouring the due process of law". The due process of law, convention, and the separation of powers demanded of him, a Union minister, that he refrain from directly or indirectly commenting on the matters before the courts. Him garlanding the convicted criminals while the matter was still pending before the judiciary was not only pure pandering to the worst elements in the country but also a blatant attempt to influence and interfere in the proceedings before the courts.
In Modi's India one had come to expect such felonious politics from Giriraj and his kind but wasn't Sinha different? India, obviously naively, expected different and better from Sinha.
Most unfortunately and tragically for India, in the midst of all this Modi the strongman-- and his one man show or with Shah thrown in one could argue a two man show-- stands acquiescently silent while the rule of law rapidly slides toward rule of men and mobs threatening the complete destruction of the already beleaguered ethics of politics and that too in the country of Mahatma Gandhi--one of the most ethical fathers/mothers any nation has the good fortune to have had.
India must lance the fast ballooning boil of ethical corruption on its body politic. According to Mr. Modi, and in fact, he is the top public servant of the country. Therefore the chief responsibility to stanch the ethical bleeding is his. In the case of Jaytant Sinha's assault on ethics Mr. Modi has only one choice: Dismiss Jayant Sinha from the Union cabinet and send a message to the country that he Mr. Modi is the Prime Minister of all citizens of India, not just of the RSS/BJP.
Ethical politics are fundamental to the building of a modern, prosperous, egalitarian, and democratic India.
